Non, I regret... something

So the French, architects of the EU, have said Non to the Constitution of Europe. The problem here isn't the stupidity and arrogance of the ministers who wrote it, nor is it the skewed awareness of the No voters in France (and, on Wednesday, in the Netherlands.) It's just that word 'Constitution'.
The document France said no to yesterday isn't a 'Constitution'. A constitution is a statement of grand principles; it's short, written in plain language, covering basic human needs and desires shared by a large majority.
How long is the American constitution - two pages? Three? It's something fundamental about stuff that matters and stands for all time; it's that simplicity that makes it worthwhile. (Let the lawyers argue over its finer interpretation; the substance can be agreed on.)
But the European proposal is 200 pages of administrative procedures, with a few bits of human rights stuff thrown in for good measure. (There's something in there about 'the right to a job search in the event of unemployment', for chrissakes.) It is not a constitution; it's a three-ring binder for simplifying EU structure and function, something it sorely needs. And it should have been called that.
Europe - now at 25 member states - desperately needs a simplified, majority-voted set of rules of engagement. But it doesn't need a 'Constitution'. Those 25 countries are different, and proud to be so, without any particular need to behave the same way or believe in the same things. A common market doesn't need a common president or common point of view. Perhaps now the EU can start concentrating on what it started out to be: an economic area allowing the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people in a single borderless market of peaceful member states.
That's a noble goal, and we were so close to it. And now we're years behind again. All because Chirac wanted to call a three-ring binder a 'Constitution'. Give me strength.

Memo to the aging guy in the....

...dark blue rollerskate car (I think it's a Vauxhall) so obviously suffering a mid-life crisis who pulled up alongside me on the A21 towards Sevenoaks today:
Please note for future reference that when I'm maintaing 36km/h into a headwind on a twitchy triathlon bike, I will never, under any circumstances, regard a passing motorist asking me if there's a big caravan salespark nearby as in any way 'cool'.
I mean, sometimes - just sometimes - I just want to yell at someone, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"
And incidentally - it was at the next roundabout. You missed it.

Contentment is a curious thing

A warm evening. Three interesting clients at work, a glass of sparkling mineral water, three ridiculously colourful trees outside, a brace of bikes downstairs and a freshly-scrubbed new kitchen in my great little house. I am content with life.
And ... I haven't done squat all year.
I was never so creative as when my back was against the wall and my personal equity was being shredded by bad decisions and a media slump. Gigantic information architectures, sixty-variable financial plans, a series of essays that reached a quarter of a million people. Now I'm just ... existing. Health plan, mortgage, a pension, a fun hobby and a subscription to The Economist.
A full life. A happy life. And like millions of others when they reach this point, I feel I've - stopped. Too content to push it any further.
This just won't do. Happiness is not a natural state. How do I get my drive back?

OK, a bit more on Revenge et al

OK, I lied. I WILL write a bit more about Star Wars. A couple of things that occured to me last night are worth talking to myself about.
The names. Tatooine, Wookie, Mos Eisley, Bantha - nouns from early films somehow 'fit' their settings, comparable to Tolkein. But now - Greivous? Dooku? Just babytalk, and it's pure laziness.
Continuity. This is very, very good. All the loose ends get tied up, like why C3PO doesn't remember any of his former life in Episode IV onwards. As does the justification for Kenobi flumphing into nothingness when Darth sabres him in IV. But better is Lucas' sense of responsibility to the fans. Vader's reason for wearing a bucket on his head isn't explained in earlier films, yet the duel with Kenobi involving molten lava is a well-known part of the backstory - and in 'Sith' we see it. And the last scenes induced a shiver, with the Star Destroyer (is that REALLY a young Peter Cushing cgi'd onto the bridge?) and the Skywalker Farm totally faithful to 1977. Redeemed at last.
Dialogue. Enough said. Literally. It's every bit as bad as I and II.
Storytelling. I was really panicking right at the start, when the scrolling backstory gets - well, a bit complicated!!! But the sense of scale is awesome. A universe where people travel between star systems in single-seat runabouts without even taking a packed lunch? Yoda heads off to Planet Wookie at the drop of a hat, with the noble aim of giving a young Chewbacca a cameo? In the earlier trilogy the storytelling was more human; characters ate and slept and got cranky. Here, everyone's a superhuman.
Suspension of disbelief. Thanks to the incredible craft, it's easy to believe Ewan McGregor really is riding a big gecko and that the droid guy can handle four lightsabres. The disbelief creeps in from basic plotting leaps - Hayden's spending all his spare time round Natalie's place, and only Ewan twigs he might have something to do with her bun in the oven? (He's even kissing her round the back of the pillars of the Jedi Temple! Hyperspace drive, yet no CCTV?) Time and again, you want to tap on the screen and slap the characters on their foreheads.
Cleanliness. There's no dirt in this trilogy, and it's the poorer for it. (Was it deliberate, to show that the Republic had grace and art and the later Empire didn't?) Natalie Portman's flat looks like a serviced apartment. Even the homagey rubbish chute looks antiseptic. The 70s trilogy had machines breaking down, dust in the corners, and you got the feeling the characters would have liked a shower after a lightsabre fight.
Money. Wouldn't it be nice to occasionally see someone grappling with real problems, like paying for things? I mean, practically nobody has a proper job, and even if they did, government salaries surely wouldn't pay for day-long jaunts through hyperspace to planets lightyears away. And how are the Jedi actually funded? I can appreciate their selfless nature might keep their salary demands down, but the Jedi temple looks like a really costly piece of real estate. No film's grappled with this since Blade III.
Amateur critics. Of course, none of the above matters a damn. Do we expect a filmmaker to make the same films in his 60s as he did as a young man of 30? Or capture the same rawness with an unlimited budget and colossal expectations? Lucas even takes a few sly digs at his critics, with an 'only evil deals in absolutes' line. (Ironic, since the Star Wars universe rarely deals in anything but absolutes - good guys are really good, which gives you a license to steal money, hypnotise people etc., and bad guys have no redeeming features at all.)
But overall - despite the craft overwhelming art, the appalling dialogue, the bad acting - the second trilogy is redeemed, and the arc's finally complete. It was worthwhile... just. The best line I can give is that it finally made me want to buy the DVDs.

More on Star Wars

There's nothing I can say about the latest Star Wars film that'll add anything to the sum total of human knowledge, so let me limit my review to six words:
Whoa, that's a lot of lightsabres!

Truly a great 24 hours for medical science. First a Korean team demonstrates scaleable harvesting of own-brand embryonic stem cells, then the British team in Newcastle-upon-Tyne clones a complete human embryo. Great stuff - the basic building blocks of life, created in a lab ready to go to work just like a chip from raw silicates.
Obviously the USA's talking heads are already shrieking. But let's see if they're still saying the same when stem cell research offers them a new liver and replacement tissue for their rotted hearts, shall we?
Bringing me to my dirty little secret: I'm addicted to Brand New You, a UK reality show where the camera goes in close to some serious plastic surgery - facelifts, dental implants, breasts, the whole kit and caboodle. And it's utterly fascinating. I force myself to watch, because the skill of the surgeons - and their love for their work - is infectious; they really seem to get a kick out of what they do.
Combined with today's 'serious' medical announcements, I'm even more sure that death and aging just aren't things anyone under 40 needs to worry about. Stem cells and other discoveries will delete hereditaries from your genome, snip cancers from every cell, retrofit scarred stroke tissue and stop your brain atrophying to mush. We'll get there. Give it 40 years.

More on Star Wars...

Reportage usually bores me, but Caitlin Moran's T2 review of London's recent Stars Wars marathon is brilliant, especially the part where she thinks two people are having oral sex in the row in front. (It turns out to be a guy in a Wookie outfit who's put the head in his lap to comb its fur.)

Revenge on the Sixth

I chortled ('chortle' seems like the right world, since it sounds like a Star Wars baddie) at a snippet from Leicester Square. Apparently at the Revenge of the Sith premiere, the doorman asking for tickets was mildly amused when someone replied,
'You don't need to see my tickets. These aren't the cinemagoers you're looking for.' (Presumably the wag did a Jedi hand dance too.)
However, with 400 people in the queue, and approximately one in ten making the same joke, it began wearing a little thin in short order.
And when the sixth geek made the crack, the doorman did what any disciplined, uniformed, and precisely-trained member of an ancient and respected order would do.
He biffed him.

(The title joke, by the way, is my own. But I can't claim credit for the guy who suggested the film's UK launch shouldn't have happened on May 5. Wouldn't 'May the Fourth be with You' have been worth getting the reels delivered a day earlier?

British MP George Galloway's appearance before American Senators was a joy to watch. The guy's politics are just plain wrong - an unreconstructed socialist - but the contest between Ivy League Americans and a pugnacious Glasweigian made brilliant television.
Is the USA finally starting to understand what a vast con it's been subjected to?
100,000 people dead (far more than Saddam ever killed) on a whim, a prayer, and a pack of lies. No WMDs, no link to bin Laden (all obvious from day one) and some $73bn a year bled into the sand.
Was it really about oil? Was it really about Dubya's dad? I like to think the blame goes further: the American people needed to see dead Arabs. Didn't matter who they were (or even if many were lookalikes such as Kurds, Turks, and Assyrians); Americans just wanted blood to flow, needed the bodycount to assuage its pain. Chasing down a few terrorists would never have been enough.
After 911 it became politically impossible not to invade a Middle Eastern militarised nation, and Iraq was just the easiest option.
And in the UK, Blair's new bills are out: more ID cards giving a license to snoop, more anti-terror laws that'll be used against everyone else, and ever more nanny-stating of a Britain already overtaxed, suffocated by red tape, and Health & Safetied to death.
I don't think I like the way the world's going.

Memo to recruiters: do some work

It's definitely recruiting season for the web trades: I've had six calls from recruiters in the last two weeks. It's good being in a position to say No - but I'm appalled by the sheer laziness of the current crop of recruitment consultants.
What happened to a simple 'Is it all right to talk?' Twice I've been with clients when a call came in and someone I've never spoken to before launched into a pitch. Come to that, how about actually introducing yourself into the bargain? You may be Kevin from Wotsit IT, but why do you expect me to know Wotsit IT is a recruitment agency? Give me some context, please.
And while we're at it, start READING the CV you're looking at. 'Information Architect' does not mean 'Technical Architect'. If you'd read the first paragraph of my CV you'd realise I'm not the guy you're looking for: if keywords like UML pop up it doesn't mean I'm a coder, it means I know how to talk to them.
Finally, stop asking me to fill in endless forms to 'get onto your system' - you've got all the information already. Don't ask me to do a day of work reformatting things for your convenience. If one in ten approaches wins me an interview, and one in ten interviews lands a job, that's equivalent to nearly a quarter of a year's work you're asking me to do in order to get you your fee. Have some sense of proportion.
And don't get me started on the low salary ranges and poor job descriptions I see all the time when chasing potential clients. What exactly is there about 'mimimum salary requirement' that you don't understand? And I suggest giving one of your job descriptions to your mother and see if she can make even a vague guess as to what the job's about. Since I win about one in five of the clients I go after, it suggests my record as a nonprofessional is far better than yours as a pro.
In short: recruiters, you're going nowhere fast. Get off your lazy bums and DO SOME WORK.

UK's debt to the USA: getting there

Brown's finally writing a cheque for the next-to-last installment of Britain's war debt. After this month's payment, there's only £253m left, to be settled in 2006.
Most Americans are genuinely shocked to hear their help during WWII wasn't a gift - it was an overdraft arrangement, and at a rate of interest that'd make an East End loan shark blow out his cheeks in admiration.
Of course, countries surrounded on all sides by hordes of Nazis don't have great credit ratings, and when the USA let Britain run up a £1bn debt it had no way of knowing if a penny would ever be repaid - and £1bn to the US economy back then was a far more significant chunk of GDP than it would be today. Justifying the high interest. (The £1bn debt ballooned to over £50bn with interest, but a large chunk of that was racked up due to inept handling of the UK economy by a Labour government of the 70s.)
By waiting for the right moment and taking some big financial risks, the USA managed to strip out what was left of the UK's liquidity, add some assets to its own portfolio, and within three years complete the switching of places with the UK for world leadership. (In 1938 the USA's GDP was barely twice Britain's; ten years later it was six times.) For the Americans, the European side of WWII wasn't really a war. It was just good business.

Calling it a night

Not bad. Could have been far worse.
Blair's heading back to Downing St... but not in jubilation. He'll lose nearly a hundred seats, and won't be able to rule by decree any more; from tomorrow onwards we'll have real government again, with the Labour 'awkward squad' of 50-60 MPs frequently voting against his policies. He'll get far less of what he wants done, will not leave the lasting legacy he desperately wants, and is unlikely to serve out a full term - probably handing over to Gordon Brown within two years.
And the Conservatives are back - as a true political force. Welcome back, blues.
So now, at somewhat after 3am, I'm heading for bed.

Early gains slowing

As expected the Tory gains are slowing; the swings are getting smaller, the results more expected. Labour's now projected to return with a majority of 68. Not great - I'd have preferred 40-50, the best any conservative could expect. But anything below 90 makes it much more difficult for Blair to do whatever he wants.
And London! From an almost completely red splotch on the map, several tracts of London have turned blue tonight, bringing far more political balance to the capital. And that's a good thing.

Turning on the results flow

Results coming in thick and fast now, and some real surprises among them: a Con gain in Peterborough - and a big one, with Labour dropping 10%. If that holds true across the marginals, Labour's in real trouble - it puts the swingometer into hung territory. Terrific stuff!

TORIES RETAKE PUTNEY!!! YAYYY!!!!

Justine Greening, a Conservative, has taken Putney! This seat wasn't even in the top marginals for the Tories; a win like that means Blair is now seriously worried. Watch this gal: she must have fought the Lib Dems like a tiger to get disgruntled Labour voters onto her side instead. Destined for big things. Brilliant!

Rotherham sort-of says yes to BNP

Hmmm... ten or so seats now declared, but a surprise in Rotherham - the BNP candidate (a tiny extreme rightwing party of wannabe skinheads) has kept his deposit! That means the BNP now has to be considered as a party instead of an irritant - not good.
First London seat declares: Vauxhall, home of MI6, a fictional Tube station, and a very interesting pub. Again Lib Dems make gains.

David Davies to hang on?

Hmmm. A whisper arrives that David Davies, a Conservative Shadow Minister (presumably for Defence, given that he's ex-SAS and probably knows ten ways to kill with a ball of candy floss) has done surprisingly well in Dorset - he was seriously worried about losing to the Lib Dems. But it looks like he's going to hold on, and - even better - the Labour candidate may even lose his deposit! How about that: the ruling party gets lumped in with the Monster Raving Loonies and the vanity projects like Veritas and Respect.

What's the deal in Scotland?

72 to 59! I didn't realise the redrawing of Scotland's electoral districts had involved that much red ink. Scotland has been over-represented at Westminster for decades, and 59 seats is still a few more than it deserves based on population... and all those lost seats are Labour.
BARNSLEY just in: Labour wins, but down 9%! The Lib Dems are surging. Even the tiny BNP nearly kept its deposit. Drama is building.

Things hotting up in the media

A note on the side: all the BBC's local journalists seem to be incredibly hot - lots of golden blondes in their 20s and early 30s.
But on the real business of the evening, if the Lib Dems keep doing this well (gaining ground thanks to disaffected ex-Labour voters) then the shadow Conservative cabinet is in deep shit. At least four of the Tory front bench are in marginals, and Howard's already inexperienced team will be shot to hell.

4 seats declared, Blair sweating

An early pattern. Four seats now declared - all safe Labour territory, but all three showing Labour with a large drop in its share. The TV pundits are saying it's a Lib Dem surprise - but is it?
This election has been the first where principal campaigning efforts have gone to marginal seats, American-style. I wonder if voters in these safe Labour seats - where Labour deliberately didn't focus its efforts because it never needed to - are just pissed off that they had so little attention?
If so, that's bad news for the Conservatives, because it means the marginal seats will have much smaller swings away from Labour. The early fist-pumping of 4-6% swings may be overenthusiastic....

First out of the gate: Sunderland (again)

Polls closed! And I take back my earlier gloom. Tonight could be a lot more interesting than I thought - the first seat to declare shows a much bigger swing away from Labour than expected. The TV exit poll predicted a much smaller Labour majority than expected - 66 seats. That's good, because anything less than 70 seats puts Blair on the defensive: there'll be pressure to give Brown the keys to Number 10.
But the actual first result suggests it's even worse than that - a safe Labour seat in the north has been returned with over 2000 fewer votes than in 2001, meaning the swing away from Labour is unusually large. And the Lib Dems seem to be benefitting.
A sparkle of hope... I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Rail has problems with funding hole

Typical: Britain's farcical rail network builds a hole in the right place, but can't afford to put a station in it. Just as the UK builds something truly world-class - the new Eurostar hub looks amazing - it falls at the last fence. I don't know, perhaps they can hire it out to TV crews or something.

UK re-elects Blair

Voting's only just started, but the result isn't in doubt: despite Iraq, despite the lies, despite the taxes, Blair will be returned to power tomorrow. All due to the ineptitude of his opponents.
I mean, the Conservative manifesto was simply a laundry list of populist issues - cleaning hospitals more regularly? Cutting taxes by a tiny £4bn? It was a campaign of hot buttons and shallow appeal - the sign of a panicked party, not a coherent vision for Britain.
Where were the big ideas, from any party? Just as importantly, where were the actual issues - education, pensions, and the elephant in the room that'll start trumpetting any day now, Britain's aging nuclear capacity?
Blair will win. He will never be punished over Iraq, will never pay the price for kicking Britain into its death spiral of massive taxes, public sector bloat, and reduced competitiveness. I head for the polling station to cast my useless vote, in a constituency with a huge Labour majority. And something inside me just... gives up.
At least Blair will win because people actually voted for him. Which is marginally better than outright voter fraud - as Dubya's now done twice. (The big story in 2004 wasn't Ohio: it was Florida again, Republicans flipping a hundred thousand ballots in their favour in smaller counties where no TV cameras went.) But it's still nothing to be proud of when actual turnout probably means less than one in six voters cast their ballot for you. Never before have I felt such a lack of choice.
Never mind, there's always invading Iran to look forward to.